Roy Moore Election: A Referendum for America on the Constitution

Chuck Todd opined this week that Roy Moore “doesn’t appear to believe in the Constitution as it’s written” because – get this – Moore believes our rights come to us from God and not from government.

Todd’s abject, abysmal, dangerous ignorance of our founding documents is shared by all the pundits on the left who think they are the smartest people in the room. But it is Chuck Todd and his ilk who don’t understand the Constitution as written.

The Declaration makes it unambiguously clear that our rights most emphatically do not come to us from government but from the Creator. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

As the Founders go on to say, the purpose of government is not to grant us rights but to guarantee them to us (emphasis mine): “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

This is not complicated. Our fundamental human and civil rights come to us from God, and it is government’s job to protect those rights from being stripped from us either by man or by government itself. In fact, the entire Bill of Rights was enacted to protect us as American citizens from the overreaching, intrusive power of our own central government.

Roy Moore believes these these things passionately, at the core of his being. In other words, Moore’s worldview is identical to the view of the Founders. There is not one inch of daylight between Moore’s view of public policy and the views of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams and every other signer of the Declaration and framer of the Constitution.

Moore believes, as the Founders did, in the Creator who is revealed in Scripture. He believes, as the Founders did, that it is central to our nation’s security and prosperity that this God be revered, worshipped, and obeyed.

He believes, as the Founders did, that marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman. He believes, as the Founders did, that homosexual behavior is fundamentally immoral and that no sane society should ever promote it, exalt it, or give it special protections in law.

He believes, as the Founders did, in protecting the free exercise of religion, especially the exercise of the Christian faith on which this nation was built. He believes, as the Founders did, that freedom of speech extends to political speech, not to profanity or pornography.

He believes, as the Founders did, in a small, limited central government which would be, in Jefferson’s words, “(bound) down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

He believes, as the Founders did – Thomas Jefferson in particular – that the values of Islam are fundamentally incompatible with the values of the Constitution.

Moore’s opponent in the December 12 election, Doug Jones, believes in abortion on demand, rejects religious liberty for employers with regard to abortifacients, and wants big government to continue to control health care and to put a tax on carbon.

Bottom line: a vote for Roy Moore is a vote for the Constitution. A vote for the other guy isn’t.

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)

Bryan Fischer is the Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association, where he provides expertise on a range of public policy topics. Described by the New York Times as a "talk-radio natural," he hosts the "Focal Point" radio program on AFR Talk,which airs live on weekdays from 1-3 p.m. Central on American Family Radio's nationwide talk network of 125 stations.
A graduate of Stanford University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Bryan pastored in Idaho for 25 years, during which time he served for one session as the chaplain of the Idaho state senate. He founded the Idaho Values Alliance in 2005, and is a co-author of Idaho's marriage amendment. He has been with AFA since 2009.
In his role as a spokesman for AFA, he has been featured on media outlets such as Fox News, CBS News, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, Russia Today television and the Associated Press, has been a frequent guest on talk radio to discuss cultural and religious issues. He has been profiled in publications such as the New York Times, Newsweek, the New Yorker, and BuzzFeed. He has been married to his bride, Debbie, since 1976, and they have two grown children.

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